And, as happens with these things, I read on. And wandered aimlessly around the article and its environs, in a way that one could not do with the physical construct of the information. And while wandering aimlessly I came across the precise video I’d been looking for, which features Jon Postel very briefly.

Unintended consequences of the blogosphere.

I’ve loaded it on to my VodPod, visible on my sidebar, and also left you a link to the Google video here. If you want to get a contemporaneous idea of what people expected to do with the ARPANET and early internet, it’s definitely worth watching. I found it spellbinding. But then I’m weird that way.

By the way, the video is around 26 minutes long, there appears to be about four minutes of “nothing” at the end. You have been warned.

Like this:

5 thoughts on “Steven King’s 1972 film”

The insights of Arpanet founders hold up well even now. In fact, we’re still waiting for a few of their predictions to be realized, which should happen in the not too distant future as network speed and bandwidth continue to improve.

I am grateful that I was there to capture a few of their thoughts and help document a bit of the early history of the internet.

This is an amazing video. There is so much being said on so many levels (i.e. patterns and concepts that relate to relationships and ecosystems) , I had to keep stopping the video to fully absorb and understand what was being said.

Steven’s also absolutely right in that what’s being said in the video is still relevant today. Actually it’s probably even more relevant. Why? Because today we are “unfortunate” to have an abundance of things (i.e. bandwidth, storage, etc), whereas back then the system was built on the fundamentals of limitations for the time. Yet by being built on limitations, it actually became much more reliable and sustainable because of it. It’s one reason why I think we need to start limiting ourselves and our communications to start seeing the truly important core elements of the system versus the superficial expendable ones.

JP – the BBC would love to contact Steven about his film “computer networks” for a project we are currently working on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/
I am posting this in the vain hope that Steven re-visits or if you can in anyway forward on my details to him I would be eternally grateful.
Many thanks!
Briony[email protected]